The Multivariate Resonance
by Quartertofive
Summary: D&D and a bit of scientific tinkering with the multiverse throw the gang into an adventure they're not prepared for.
1. Chapter 1

"Sheldon, this is crazy." Raj squinted at the whiteboard over Sheldon's shoulder. "Brilliant, all right, but really completely insane."

"Mm-hm," Sheldon ignored him.

"Raj, lets start the game. He's not moving any time soon," Leonard said from the coffee table. He cleared away the boxes of take-out and handed out the character sheets. Raj shook his head and took a seat next to Howard, leaving Sheldon to his calculation.

"Is he doing what I think he's doing?" Howard asked, looking over the whiteboards. The apartment was filled with even more of them than usual, all covered in increasingly tiny equations.

Leonard shrugged. "Maybe? I lost track a while ago. He's just messing about with this because someone left a cupcake in his office three days ago and he's refused to go in there since."

"What was wrong with the cupcake?" Howard asked.

"Nothing, there was a birthday party and they had leftovers. I got one too, it was yummy," Raj said.

"It was blue," Sheldon said over his shoulder. Then they lost him to the whiteboard again.

"It had frosting," Leonard explained.

The door opened and Penny came in. "Hey guys, we're heading out. Have fun."

"You too," Leonard smiled.

"See you at home, Howie," Bernadette called from behind Penny.

"Love you," Howard said.

"Sheldon," Amy nodded at her boyfriend.

"Nyah. Something." Sheldon didn't look away from the board. He started to wave but gave up.

Amy looked disappointed, but she met Bernadette's look and shrugged. "It's all right, I'm attracted to his aloof obsessiveness."

_My turn!_ "Goodbye, ladies!" Raj said with a broad smile. No alcohol! None!

"Bye, Raj!" All three of them replied together.

Raj basked. It had been days since he'd had a drink. Days! He didn't even like the stuff, so that was a relief, and here were three whole girls talking to him. Girls who were someone else's girls, admittedly, but he wasn't going to quibble. _Girls who aren't Lucy. _Maybe he would quibble a little.

Penny had almost closed the door when Sheldon yelled "wait!" He unfolded himself from in front of the board like a row of dominos falling, blinked and looked around the room with a disturbing intensity. He capped the marker and put it down.

"What is it, Sheldon?" Penny asked.

"Stand over there." Sheldon pointed to a spot by his desk.

"_Why_?" Penny asked, but she humored him and stood where he pointed.

"Rajesh, move your left arm four inches up."

Raj looked at Sheldon's calculations. He read the last line._ No, that's insane. _He read it again. All right, so it added up. _Lots of things add up. _The bill for the Chinese food added up. Tentatively, Raj moved his arm. He had a bad feeling about this, but curiosity was getting the better of him.

Sheldon leapt into action, positioning the six of them like chess pieces.

Leonard gave his long suffering shrug. "Let's just go with it. The sooner it doens't work, the sooner we can all get on with our lives." Sheldon snorted. "Even what passes for your life, Sheldon."

Sheldon shook his head. He repositioned Raj's arm again, messed with Howard's hair, put Amy by the window and had Bernadette perched on the corner of the kitchen table.

"Those are adorable shoes, Bernadette," Raj said.

"Oh, thank you."

"Quiet! Don't move!"

"Leonard, what's going on?" Penny asked from her corner, where Sheldon now had her standing on one foot.

Leonard rolled his eyes. "I think he's trying to establish a macroscopic multiverse resonance. It's nonsense."

Raj found himself looking over the whiteboard again. Pure nonsense. _Sure_.

"Are you done?" Howard asked.

"Almost." Sheldon did a slow turn in the middle of the room. "Now we just need something the probability of which occuring should take longer to come about than the time between now and the heat death of the universe. Give or take."

Sheldon looked at Penny.

_Uh oh. _Raj had shared an office with Sheldon for too long. He had an inkling of how that mind worked, especially it's limitations. "Dude, don't do it."

"Amy, I'm sorry," Sheldon said and walked over to Penny. "You understand it's for science."

Two things happened at once. Sheldon turned around and kissed Bernadette full on the mouth, and Lucy tentatively leaned in through the open door and said "um, hi."

Then the third thing happened.


	2. Chapter 2

Bernadette didn't like to flaunt it, but she was pretty smart. She let Sheldon carry through with the worst kiss in history for a moment, and only felt rather sorry for him. _Poor Amy, too. _

"Ok, Sheldon, now-" she was interrupted by a scream. "Penny?"

"What. the. hell?" Penny stared around in bewilderment, and then Bernadette looked around too, and had to clamp her jaws to stop the scream that was bubbling up in her own throat.

"Jesus Christ," Sheldon said, and fainted. By then Penny was crouched under Sheldon's desk, her arms up.

_Well then. Down to me. _Bernadette took a deep breath and hopped off the table. If she could cope with that business with the missing tube of bubonic plague, she could cope with this. Besides, _this_ was clearly just a dream.

Sheldon's desk was there, the kitchen table was there and a neatly right angled piece of the floor had come along too. That was it - Sheldon's head lay on bright green grass. The little patch of the apartment, along with its three passengers, stood in the middle of a sunny field. The air was heady with the rich smell of earth and living things, the sky vast and dazzlingly blue overhead. Mountains rose majestically purple and white in the distance.

Bernadette carefully poked her toe over the edge of the floor. Nothing happened. The grass felt like grass. She took a step out. _Ok. _

"Bernadette, what's happened?" Penny asked. She stood up slowly.

"Well, at face value, Sheldon seems to have succeeded in transferring us to a parallell universe."

"What does that mean?"

"I really think this is just a dream."

Penny looked around. "My dreams usually involve casting directors ordering pie at the Cheesecake Factory and me throwing it in their face, for some reason. Should we wake him up?" She poked Sheldon gently with her foot.

"Let's get our bearings first," Bernadette suggested.

"Our bearing are: holy crap by what-the-fuck." Penny said.

Bernadette climbed up onto the table, taking in the sweep of the horizon. A few miles away - "That looks like a town of some kind." She checked her phone. "No signal."

Penny looked at Sheldon's computer. "No internet."

"Yeah, I think we could have guessed that." The power and net cables were sliced cleanly through. "Ok, wake him up."

"SHELDON!"

"Ahhh!" Sheldon jerked awake and sat up. He looked around. "Ahhhh!"

Penny slapped him.

Sheldon's eyes went even wider than usual. "Was that really necessary?"

"I just wanted to do it." Penny shrugged. "You know, in general. Also, WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE, SHELDON?"

Sheldon scrambled to his feet. "I have made the greatest scientific breakthrough since...since...ever!"

"Or this is a dream." Bernadette said.

"Or that," he admitted. "I was attempting to shift us into a universe that was identical to our own, but in which the cupcake on my desk did not contain carcinogenic food coloring."

Bernadette sighed. "We'd have gotten you another cupcake."

"It wouldn't be the same."

"Well, I don't see a cupcake, Sheldon. I see a field." Penny appeared to be ready to slap him again.

"Clearly, someone moved. My math was correct. We seem to have drifted a further than I meant to."

"Lucy came in." Bernadette frowned. "That would have thrown everything off. I can't believe I'm talking like this makes sense."

"Lucy? She wasn't in my calculation at all. We could be anywhere. So much for my cupcake."

"All right!" Bernadette clapped her hands together sharply. "You're crazy, we're in the multiverse, great. How do we get back?"

"I am not crazy, my mother-"

Bernadette cut him off. "No, you're crazy. Now fix this."

Sheldon looked around again, twisting in that disconcerting way that he had. "Well, I suppose if I were to line everyone up and do the calculations again..."

"Great, it's a plan. Where's everyone?" Penny asked.

Sheldon shrugged.

"Sheldon, what have you done with my husband?" Bernadette asked. There was a cold knot in her stomach. _This is a dream. Just a dream._ It didn't feel like a dream, and it didn't feel like a joke. "Where is Howard?"

"They have to be around here somewhere."

"I don't see anyone."

"We aren't usually seen until we want to be seen," said a cool voice behind her.

Bernadette turned around to find a small woman pointing a crossbow right at her heart. She wore rough leather clothes and knee-high boots. Tattoos spiralled their way up her neck and cheeks and covered the backs of her hands. Bernadette thought the look was a bit much, really, but the crossbow looked perfectly authentic.

"_Leslie_?" Penny and Sheldon said together.

Leslie smiled thinly. "My reputation precedes me. Good."

"Howard's ex, Leslie?" Bernadette asked. Oh, but this kept getting better and better.

Leslie lifted an eyebrow. "Who?" She shrugged. "Take them. We'll figure out what we have here back in the city."

_Who is she talking to? _Bernadette wondered. Leslie appeared to be completely alone...until she wasn't. A dozen more people stepped out of thin air around her, and none of them looked friendly.


	3. Chapter 3

"Your boyfriend kissed my wife!" Howard's voice cut through the darkness. Leonard's head felt like it was a tin can filled with cement. Opening his eyes would be an act of pure heroism.

"And who's fault is that?" Leonard thought it was Amy shouting.

"That doesn't even make sense!" Howard yelled back.

"It wouldn't to you!" She sounded angry, but there was a crack in her voice.

_I can't deal with this, _Leonard thought. On the other hand, who else would? _Where's Penny? _

He opened his eyes and sat up. He had no idea what he had been expecting, but it wasn't what he saw. He was sitting on a low couch in a large, circular room. Broad windows let in sunlight and fresh air. The stone floor was strewn with dark carpets, and the old fashioned wooden furniture was simple and elegant. Leonard had never seen a spot where he wanted to spend an evening with a book more than the armchair next to the cold fireplace, if only it had not been occupied by Amy, her hair dishevelled and her face puffy.

"What happened? Where are we? Is this a dream?" He put his feet on the floor and tried to stand, but the jolt of pain in his head forced him back down.

"You got whacked pretty bad by the guards," Howard said. He was across the room from Amy, slouched in a window seat. "This looks like a parallel dimesion, and, yes, we hope to God that it's a dream."

"What guards?" Leonard touched his head carefully and winced when his fingers found a lump behind his ear. There was what felt like blood caked in his hair.

"What the hell happened? All I remember is Sheldon doing something crazy."

"It was just another Tuesday..."

"Howard, can you be serious for a moment?" Leonard tried standing again. He wobbled a bit but got there.

"Not according to anyone who has ever met me," Howard said.

Leonard barely heard the lame quip. Standing, he could see outside. A city, stretching out in every direction, vast and unmistakably pre-modern. Wide avenues and twisting alleys, domes and towers, all surrounded by a massive curtain wall.

"A parallel dimension..." Leonard turned slowly, taking in the view from every window. They were fairly high up, it seemed. The city stood on the coast, a deep blue sea dotted with islands stretching away to the horizon. In the other direction, neat fields gave way to forest and mountains.

"You should sit down. You may have a concussion," Amy said.

"Yes, that's why I should sit." Leonard's knees were about to give out anyway. He touched the lump on his head again. Definitely blood, not even dry. "How did I get hit on the head?"

"We, um, materialized in the middle of this little square, out there," Howard jerked his head towards the window, "very nice, great ambience, and then these guys with - get this - swords and spears show up. There was a kerfuffle."

"You were very brave," Amy said. "Thank you."

"Why did I need to be brave?" Leonard asked cautiously.

"I may have taken the large men armed with bladed weapons approaching us as something of a challenge, when regarding them as a suggestion might have been more appropriate." Amy touched her forehead. Leonard squinted at her. Yeah, that red patch on her face looked like it was going to bruise nicely. "You were very chivalrous in stepping in to defend me."

"Remind me never to get in a fight with this girl," Howard said. "Anyway, they knocked you out and hauled us up here. It's, I don't know, some sort of citadel or something."

"Citadel? What is this, Dungeons and Dragons again?"

"I hope so," Howard said. "Maybe all that has happened is that Sheldon knocked up some funny gas in your microwave and I'm just hallucinating this."

"You? Maybe I'm hallucinating this." Leonard said. "I was the Dungeonmaster."

"It's definitely not me," Amy said. "I have no interest in secondary-world fantasy settings. I am clearly a figment of one of your imaginations."

"Great, narrowed that down." Leonard muttered.

"Granted, I don't know how to regard the fact the very first thing you did to me was have me hit in the face by the hilt of a battleaxe."

"Sorry about that," Howard said. "I think."

Leonard shook his head. "So where are we? Middle Earth? The Forbidden Realms? Westeros? Hogwarts?"

"We can't be at Hogwarts," Howard rolled his eyes. "It's in Scotland."

"No, you're right. That would be absurd."

"Sure-" Howard was cut off by the door. Leonard could clearly hear the scrape of a key, and then the whine of the hinges. Suddenly, the argument was forgotten, the three of them still and tense. Leonard could feel his heart beating in his ears. What was going to come in?

He wasn't expecting Barry Kripke.

Kripke wore a long cloak over a suit of dark chainmail. There was a sword on his back, and a long scar ran from his hairline to his jaw, just missing the eye but tugging his mouth into something between a sneer and a crooked smile.

"Kripke?" Howard got to his feet in astonishment.

Kripke's raised an eyebrow. "I am Barran Krypkye, yes." He spoke with something of his familiar rhotism, but not quite. Leonard couldn't take his eyes off the scar. Somehow, it made the speech impediment anything but funny.

"Uh, what are you doing here?" Leonard asked. _I have the worst hallucinations ever._

Kripke looked the three of them over with a cool, weighing gaze that made the hair on the back of Leonard's neck stand on end. "I come to give you a chance to tell me what you know about the rebellion. If you give me something of value, perhaps your executions will be less painful."


End file.
